Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a capturing control apparatus, a capturing control method and a recording medium.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a capturing apparatus has been known that changes a shooting direction by moving a platform. Furthermore, a control apparatus has been known that changes the shooting direction according to a designation transmitted from a control apparatus connected to a capturing apparatus via a network. In the case of changing the installation situation of such a capturing apparatus, shooting directions of the capturing apparatus on the same instruction before and after the changing are different from each other.
As an example, the case is described of changing an installation state; the state is changed from a state where the capturing apparatus is arranged in an erect orientation into a state where the capturing apparatus is arranged in an inverted orientation, e.g., a state of being installed on a ceiling. When an instruction for changing upward the shooting direction of the capturing apparatus arranged in the erect orientation is issued to the capturing apparatus arranged in the inverted orientation, the capturing apparatus operates so as to change the shooting direction downward. In the case where the arrangement state of the capturing apparatus is thus changed from the erect orientation to the inverted orientation, the vertical and horizontal orientations with respect to the shooting directions of the capturing apparatus are reversed on the same instruction.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-153842 discloses a capturing system that stores a plurality of control programs for changing the shooting direction of a capturing apparatus and switches the control program to be used in conformity with the orientation in which the capturing apparatus is arranged. The capturing system switches the control program to thereby switch a coordinate system for representing the shooting direction in coordinates. The capturing apparatus can set the direction to a certain direction according to a specific instruction, regardless of the arrangement state.
When the control apparatus receives and displays a captured image captured by the capturing apparatus, change in arrangement state of the capturing apparatus affects the orientation of the captured image displayed by the control apparatus. Accordingly, it is desirable that the orientation of the captured image also be changed. For instance, when the arrangement state of the capturing apparatus is changed from an erect state to an inverted state, the vertical and horizontal orientations of the captured image displayed by the control apparatus are reversed. Thus, the captured image captured by the capturing apparatus in the inverted state is rotated by 180 degrees and displayed by the control apparatus, thereby allowing the captured image vertically and horizontally matching with a captured image in the erect state to be displayed.
Thus, the interface for changing the orientation of the captured image displayed by the control apparatus and the interface for changing the coordinate system for controlling the shooting direction are sometimes separately defined as instructions different from each other. In such a capturing apparatus, in the case of changing both of the orientation of the captured image displayed and the orientation of the coordinate system for controlling the shooting direction, the vertical and horizontal orientations of the captured image displayed sometimes differ from the vertical and horizontal orientations in the coordinate system. For instance, in the case where a first received one of the instructions to change the orientation of the captured image and the instruction to change the orientation of the coordinate system has been processed but the other instruction has not been processed, the orientation of the captured image does not match with the orientation of the coordinate system.
In this state, in the case where a user transmits, to the capturing apparatus, an instruction of changing the shooting direction while watching the captured image having been delivered, a platform unfortunately operates in a direction different from a direction expected by the user. An analogous problem is not limited to the case of rotating the orientation of the captured image or the orientation of the coordinate system by 180 degrees. Instead, the problem occurs in the case of rotating the orientation of the captured image or the orientation of the coordinates by any degrees.
The present invention is made in view of such problems. It is an object of the present invention to allow the shooting direction to be changed to a direction intended by the user.